Cooking experiences

I am not bragging, but men do make better food than women. I think it's only because "Men excel in everything they take on as compared to Women". For example, most of the famous shows on TV have male chefs.[:P] Anyways this is all light hearted banter, I am doomed when arguing with the Missus.

So yeah wrt cooking, I have a pact with my Missus now. I make the curries and she prepares Chapati/Roti. This weekend Missus and Neeraj came to Blacksburg. It was a fun-filled weekend. On Friday, we had BW3 chicken and Bacardi Apple Rum. Wah wah...!!! Saturday morning was spent lazing round and watching some part of the movie "Sunday". After Manas's Pina Colada concotions, everyone kind of slumped down. In the evening, Neeraj, Manas, Amar & family, Satish, Missus and myself went for bowling to Breakzone/VT Recsports. I stuck to my agreement and prepared Creamy Tomato with French Fries Curry on public demand. We had a potluck with Amar & family. Arati prepared delicious Puran-Poli.
Sunday was time to leave and we rounded off with Lunch @ Panera Bread....!!!
In all an excellent refreshing weekend...Yipppee yay...!!!

Filing Taxes

So yeah, I have finally filed my taxes. Doing taxes on your own is a pain and then truly "no gains without pains" --bad PJ. I have migrated from doing my taxes using pen and paper to online software programs. The not too obvious reason is 1040 NREZ cannot be e-filed and hence you have to do taxes using pen and paper or Adobe writer.
Some free online federal e-file options can be found at turbotax, taxact and H&R
I personally prefer taxact due to its simplicity and ease of use. Warning: I am not employed by any of these firms for tax filing purposes and these are completely my opinions. This year I did have a doubt wrt my filing status and had to check the proper documentation. Apparently, some states require same filing status as Federal, while some allow you to use a different status as deemed fit. This is very confusing to an ordinary user and I can understand why it's an easier alternative to just go meet a tax consultant. Just for the count, I think it's a lucrative business to just learn the tax laws and help people file their taxes. Though this business will peak only in Jan-April, I guess it's worth the effort to learn the laws and pass the license exam to earn few bucks..LOL Anyone out there interested in setting up a tax consultancy as a part-time Spring business??

Modding my iphone

So finally I decided to go one more step and completely unlocked my iphone. First of all, AT&T does not have a clue about the iphone and secondly if you are smart, you can find lot of loopholes with the iphone contract liability. This gives rise to the following case:
1. You can insert your old AT&T SIM in you iphone and go on with your life. AT the same time benefit from having all the previous discounts and to top off a cool phone..!!!!
assumptions: You have unlocked your iphone completely and your SIM is locked to your old phone. This also implies that your SIM has the old instrument's IMEI locked. You may or may not choose to take the $20 Data plan. No 2 year contract as well. No visual voicemail in any case.
consequences: I don't know. My investigation on forums revealed that no one had a clue about what would happen. IMHO it is a high risk situation.
2. You can only unlock the filesystem and use the iphone with your official carrier. This way you have all the cool apps on your iphone.
assumptions: You have accepted a two year agreement with AT&T and at the same time lost any discounts on your account...duh!!! wat a bummer..!!!!
consequences: you are within AT&T liability and no one can harm a hair on your body.
And be careful before upgrading to Apple's new firmwares.

I guess I have used a very nice reasoning style for my choices. If I cud only translate this in my proposal as well...!!!
this is how my iphone screen looks like now...I have used the 'summerboard package' and installed the Leopard theme.

iphone club--Yippppeeeeyayyyyyyyyyy

so after a very very busy Feb, I am back to blogging again...It's Spring break and I decided to visit MG@NJ. my I scheduled an appointment at the Apple store (Bridgewater location) to repair Macbook (MB). Apparently, there's an inherent flaw with the MB design, if you close the lid with some force you can crack the case near the touch pad due to the protrusions on the inner side of the lid(near the screen). Remember that there's a magnet on the lid, so next time apply less force while closing your MB. Neways, my trip to the Apple store resulted in another hole in my pocket. I think Apple has to stop making expensive stuff...duh. I ended up buying a 8GB iphone. Got it home activated it. Initial observations: Awesome UI..Apple rocks...!!! the software is completely blended into the hardware and that's so good. I think this is something BREW-enabled phones have not achieved. I am for Linux-enabled phones as well for eg. Nokia N810 --has Skype running on Wi-Fi.
My car had a breakdown on I-81 while traveling to DC and the iphone was of great help. I was able to pinpoint my location using Maps and give that info to the towing agency. I was also able to locate car repair places and was able to ask the towing guy to tow my car to a better place.

I also kinda jumped the loop and did a 'Jailbreak' on my iphone. I followed the instructions @iphoneatlas Also some more tweaks: do install the repo from Navizon to enable it. The IM clients are not very robust. Remove the Conceited apps software from your 'sources' and then reinstall the 'Community sources' again. This enables the installation of the 'Terminal'.
Also install the 'SUID Lib Fix' and 'BSD Subsystem 2.0 Termfix' from the 'tweaks' section. This enables you to login as root with pswd alpine and gives you backspace functionality respectively.
In a nutshell the price you pay is for the 'World' in your pocket--a very seamless integration of phone & internet.